1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the restoration industry, in general, and to the drying-out of water damaged buildings, in particular.
2. Description of the Related Art
As is known and understood, mobile desiccant dehumidifiers have begun to be employed more and more in recent years to dry water damaged buildings to reduce health problems caused by the incipient mold which develops. As is also known, silica gel is oftentimes employed as the desiccant in a wheel through which the moistened air is pulled from the walls, the flooring, the concrete, etc. into the dehumidifying chamber. As the silica gel, or other desiccant employed, absorbs the moisture, however, it becomes necessary to additionally heat the desiccant to liberate the moisture it collects; this, then, serves to optimize the operation in a continuous cycle—allowing the desiccant to continually absorb the moisture in the building and blowing dried air back in. Where large-scale desiccant equipment is employed, the heat energy required is often provided by electric heating or propane heating—but, in accordance with the teachings of my U.S. Pat. No. 6,652,628 (Ser. No. 10/190,035) firing the heat exchanger with diesel fuel offers many advantages.
As my patent describes, such desiccant dehumidifying apparatus draws moisturized air from a building through a heated desiccant within an enclosed housing and then blows dried air back into the building. Flexible hoses are oftentimes employed in this process, clamped about ducts at the input and output ports of the housing by such worm gear type clamps as tightened by screwdriver rotation in known manner. Because the drying of heavily water damaged buildings is usually an expensive procedure, it is not unusual for the dehumidifying apparatus to be operating day and night. But, it has often been noted that the flexible hose pumping the dried air back into the building blows off the duct, particularly as the blowing pressure increases. Not only is this an embarrassment to the service contractor, but it is counter-productive to the drying process, especially if the hose blows off when no one is around to reconnect it, and the dehumidifying effectively stops.